I’ve had a couple days now with Windows 7 and it is certainly an improvement over both Vista and XP, requiring slightly less resources than either (significantly less than Vista), booting faster, and offering superior usability. Yeah, but why does it cost so much? I know why.

For a stark contrast, compare Windows 7 with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, its would-be competitor. I won’t get into the argument over which OS sees the other as competition, maybe they both do. In the marketplace, however, the upgrade version of Snow Leopard costs $49.95 $29.95 ($99.95 $49.95 for a five-machine family pack) while there are twenty different versions of Windows 7 to choose from with the most popular (Windows 7 Home Premium) priced at $119.95.

Is Windows 7 really worth $70 $90 more than Snow Leopard?

(Obvious pricing brain fart above — Bob)

The better question to ask is why Microsoft decided to set the price point where they did? And the answer to that one is quite simple: Microsoft doesn’t actually want you to upgrade to Windows 7 at all.

Microsoft wants you to buy a new Windows 7 PC instead.

Setting the price at $119.95 is a brilliant move on Microsoft’s part. The company doesn’t want users to upgrade so by setting the price high Microsoft is essentially imposing a Windows 7 upgrade tax on users. Buy a new Windows 7 PC from Staples and the software price drops to $49.95, the same as Snow Leopard.

Microsoft likes to make money, hence the Windows 7 tax, but their main reason for setting the price so high is to get us all to buy new computers. That brings Microsoft less revenue per unit but more revenue overall as businesses, for example, decide to upgrade a whole office with new PC’s rather than pay $119.95 per desk just for new software. New PCs come with dramatically lower support costs for Microsoft than do retail upgrades. The pricing ploy makes Microsoft very popular, too with its Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) like HP, Dell, and hundreds of others.

Here’s another piece of evidence aiming in the same direction: have you actually done a Windows 7 upgrade? Mine took seven hours! It shouldn’t have to take that long unless part of the goal was simply to discourage upgrading. Snow Leopard took me 20 minutes to upgrade, but then Apple has no OEMs to please (this is key) and makes lots of money on upgrades even at $49.95.

When Windows 95 was introduced (I was there, shooting Triumph of the Nerds), part of the Bill Gates and Jay Leno performance that day was upgrading a 486/66 machine from Windows 3.1 to Win95. It took about half an hour. With more modern processors, memory, disk drives, and a new OS touted as being lean and mean, why should Windows 7 take significantly longer than that to upgrade?

It shouldn’t, unless speed-of-upgrading wasn’t on the feature list to begin with.

346 Comments

My boyfriend is a pretty die-hard Mac user, but he did buy an old PC laptop with XP on it. Even though netbooks are the hot thing right now, they weren’t when he was in the market, so he ended up with an older Thinkpad with XP.

He upgraded to the Windows 7 beta several months ago and absolutely LOVES it. In fact, not only is it faster than XP on his laptop, he actually likes it almost as well as his Mac. Considering he paid ~$250 for the laptop, and $4,200 for his Mac Pro tower, that’s saying something!

He now doesn’t even talk about Mac laptops any more; he wants to upgrade to the Thinkpad W series, put 8GB of RAM in it and run Windows 7. Color me shocked.

We both pre-ordered the 7 Pro upgrade on Amazon and he upgraded from the RC to the final version in a few hours the other day. I haven’t done the upgrade yet because I’m still running XP on two computers, and plan to upgrade to SSDs on both at the same time. I’m waiting for the SSD I want to come back in stock so I can place an order.

BTW, the 7 Pro upgrade pre-order on Amazon was $99. Certainly less than I paid for my trusty copy of XP years ago.

-Erica

tom b
October 27, 2009 at 7:39 am

Shiny new toy. Once he tries to actually DO something, or more to the point, to multitask efficiently, he’ll remember why Windows is so much the butt of jokes.

Tsk.. Tsk.. If you have tried Windows 7 & came away with that impression, perhaps you it would suit you well to take a few PC training classes. You obviously have no idea what multi-tasking even is.

tom b
October 28, 2009 at 4:26 am

I mean multitasking in the computer science sense. Windows does not do well once you have more than a few apps running.

GHOST
September 7, 2012 at 6:41 am

Really bro?

Windows is BOSS at multitasking!
I used a mac, for a while then used my windows PC, back during XP’s era, and XP was easier to use, and multitasking is way faster, and it costed WAY LESS than a POS mac.
Now during the windows 7 era. I used my friends top line Mac book pro. because he owned some DVD software, and he said it was okay to explore the OS.
I liked it, but it is just lacking ease of use and common sence within the MAC OS.
When I went back to my windows PC, it was awesome.
And so you know, I’m a power user, and I can program and do basically anything with a computer, both windows and mac, and its just easier to do things on windows.

Also with windows, you want to go to something, you just click click and your there. With mac, you have to click click click click then your there.

In the end now a days it comes down to the user interface with people, everyone has a prefrence.
Hardly anyone buys a PC or a MAC based upon how good they are created.
Hardware is becoming so efficient that nobody notices all the bloat that is in all operating systems and software these days, and the sad part is its increasing.

But in the end, I will buy my top end gaming PC with the latest windows OS, and it will be more powerful that any top end MAC computer, and here is the best part. It will still cost WAY LESS than anything apple charges for their “proprietary” junk.
Same reason I went from an iphone to the samsung galaxy S 2, cost was less than half the price of apples junk and the phone can do way more without me having to modd the software.

Thants also another thing with apple’s junk Vs microsoft. Microsoft makes things to where you can just click around and change things. apple tries to lock the user out and they try to tell you your not allowed to modify the OS on a computer you bought and own.

I buy it, I do what I will with it, take that apple!
Thank you microsoft for being tech friendly and user friendly, and for not being like apple corp and placing blocks within your software to piss users off.

in different parts of the world, the same product can cost more. I dont mean just because of currency conversions, I mean the actual product costs more, be it due to freight, taxes, whatever! Look up “The Big Mac Index”; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index

Its really unfair, the UK seems to be among the countries that gets hurt by it the most.

I live in NZ, our prices are generally the same as Australia’s.

shmoo
October 27, 2009 at 12:51 am

I think manufacturers will push the price as far as a particular market will bear. More “well-off” parts of the world thus get higher prices. “Well-off” meaning relative cost of living to spending power ratio.

But now that I come to think about it, by this token it’s rather alarming that the US gets the lower prices. It says something about the dollar and the spending power of the average American.

Pierre
October 27, 2009 at 10:46 am

I don’t know about Australia and New Zealand but for the UK it is self inflicted or more precisely the higher price are the result of the banking lobby that refuse to adopt the Euro.

Price transparency is the first step in efficient competition. Britain is the joke of Europe for paying more for everything and loving it. When they’ll decide that cost is more important than pampering the City of London they will join the Euro and enjoy European prices.

l.a.guy
October 27, 2009 at 2:26 am

I have a relative who is a graphic artist in Australia. Naturally he prefers Macs but the cost of hardware and software is so much more expensive in Australia that it was literally cheaper for him to fly to the U.S., buy it here (visit relatives) and then smuggle it back into the country. This was 10 years ago, so maybe it’s gotten better, but based upon the price of Windows 7 it doesn’t sound like it. I believe he said it was the Australian imposed import duties that was causing most of the price difference, but I could be wrong. In any case it suck for the Aussies.

Fake Fake Steve
October 26, 2009 at 8:38 pm

Snow Leopard costs $29.00.

Elder Norm
October 27, 2009 at 10:25 am

Thanks. $29.95 is the right price. Bob, next time double check your math.

Otherwise, I do think that the new Windows 7 will be much better than Vista. The writeups that I have seen so far put it just ahead of XP, except it cost money, takes time to upgrade, only works well on the more powerful computers. Hmmm I will wait for SP 1.

RE Your Point – I agree that MS wants folks to buy new computers first, although that dog may come back to bite them, if most buyers only go for the cheapie netbooks. MS only gets about $10 for the version of W 7 on the netbooks, and plenty of support headaches to boot.

Meanwhile, Snow Leopard is superb, and a steal at $29, and especially at $49 for five family computers.

Best Regards,

Scott
October 27, 2009 at 5:54 am

There are no support costs for MS. They force the OEM to do all the support. If you buy retail MS offers support.

Roger
October 26, 2009 at 9:17 pm

It should be noted that Windows 7 is quite a bit cheaper than earlier Windows versions. You also picked the wrong competition – Mac is but a rounding error. The real problem for Windows 7 is the Windows XP installed base.

Paul
October 27, 2009 at 7:47 am

Rounding error. Ballmer-speak. If that were the case, MS would not be spending the significant cash that they do to emulate the OS X operating system and fight them with their “I’m a PC” marketing campaign.

Anonymous
October 27, 2009 at 9:05 am

Uh yeah 20% market share is a rounding error. (that’s what my small town computer repair business sees) and given that people are still bringing in 10yr old macs for their third hd I suspect it may be even higher. Certainly the college down the road with 75% of students bringing a mac to school feels so.

shane
October 27, 2009 at 9:46 am

the department i work in at the local university is about 75% mac use and 15% windows, the rest going to linux. the students are much more pro mac than the professors. just a glance at the possible future…

You also need to look at the amount of change. For example if Windows users bought new hardware every two years and Mac users only did so every four years (and junked the old machines) then the installed base would remain the same but the PC ecosystem would have the opportunity to make more money. It is a little harder to call this one – I do believe Mac hardware is refreshed less often by users but the operating system is refreshed about as often as PC buyers get new hardware. MacOS X used to go for $129 a pop whereas Windows OEM is reputed to be in the $50 range. In either case you can bet both Microsoft and Apple try to optimize their profits.

My original statement still stands – Microsoft needs to get the XP users to upgrade. Their chance of getting Mac users to upgrade is low and even if they got every single Mac user to switch to Windows it wouldn’t be enough.

(My own biases: I am a devout Linux user)

Tyler
October 27, 2009 at 11:49 am

Love people who quote wikipedia as a valid source for information. Akin to saying “My mother told me…”

Roger
October 27, 2009 at 6:56 pm

And your figures are what? Did you actually read the Wikipedia article? Some author did not make up numbers. The numbers come from several different sources all correctly attributed. Additionally linked pages show how the numbers can be skewed.

If you have “better” numbers then quote them showing how you came up with them. Or even better add them to the Wikipedia page.

Yep. With one of them corrupt. And that one just so happens to be #14 or so.

Not that that ever happened to me, nope…”What’s that crunching noise? Oh God, it’s coming from the floppy drive…ARGH.”

-Erica

ronc
October 27, 2009 at 1:08 pm

Good point. I bought the full version of Win98 just to get rid of the floppies.

Kevin Kunreuther
October 26, 2009 at 9:38 pm

Now we know why Apple has never licensed nor ever will never license OS X (at least at this time, under current management) to any OEMs. Even if Apple set strict guidelines on the hardware the licensed OEMs should use before installing OS X, overall, it doesn’t justify the added expense for support. Better to operate within its current parameters and let the hackers “illegally” use OS X on non Apple equipment for fun and prosecute wildcats operating as shadowy proxies like Psystar.
After the files were saved, I just gave a Viking funeral to my homemade BeBox of ten years (originally a Win98SE/Personal BeOS config) – apologies to environmentalists (sorry, also, no video for YouTube freax), yet I’m more likely to replace it with a MacMini than a Win7 PC/laptop/netbook configuration from Best Buy. Win 7 ain’t bad at all, and openSUSE or Ubuntu certainly allows me a heckuva lot more freedom and security (not to mention a Linux distro that’s easier to use than stuff from ten years ago) but OS X is DisneyWorld for me and the package it come in (MacMini) is convenient and powerful enough for me and probably serves the needs most users or typical consumers.

This strategy to convert XP user base by buying new Win7 boxes/laptops/netbooks and servers is probably good for the economy (a recent ex-president would probably tout it as patriotic – ha!), but probably enough of these users (not a majority) who do decide to invest in new hardware will make the switch to Cupertino (and enough home and businesses may even give Ubuntu, Red Hat and Novell a whirl). But in five or seven years, the OS will matter not a whit to home consumers – it will be about the 24-7 open all the the time browser that never crashes, protects users from phish,spam, viruses, worms and works quickly,silently, invisibly.

Geoff
October 27, 2009 at 5:56 am

Apple will never license Mac OS X to other OEMs because Apple is not a software company (like Microsoft). They are a hardware company. It’s the same reason why Apple will never willingly allow other MP3 players to work with iTunes. Apple does not make money selling songs. They make money selling iPods.

While Apple does make some great software, if you view them as a hardware company, everything they do makes sense. Well, mostly.

David W
October 27, 2009 at 6:29 am

Apple actually does let other vendors work with iTunes via the iTunes API. You write your own program to backup and restore your media player. iTunes will let you talk to your media player via the API, so you know where the songs are.

Most media players actually just scan the disk and build their own database because it is simpler than depending upon a third party’s API that may change. After all, it’s what iTunes does to organize your disk.

Viswakarma
October 27, 2009 at 9:55 am

Apple is “Computer” Company, like IBM and Sun, and not a hardware company like Dell or software company like Microsoft!!!

monoclast
October 27, 2009 at 10:17 am

Apple is a *solutions* company. They make their money from hardware that is made valuable by the software running on it.

Microsoft is certainly desperate to repair the damage caused by Vista, so you’d think they’d be giving Windows 7 away. But who are we kidding; they’re still a monopoly in so, so many areas, they can charge whatever they want. So they haven’t changed their pricing policies between XP, Vista, and 7.

Apple charges $29 for Snow Leopard, which is something they haven’t done before (with a fully-baked OS). They could have charged $50 and gotten away with it (heck, they’re Apple; they could have charged $130)

Snow Leopard had precious few new features for users, but it has a boat load of new features for developers, including fancy new SDKs to help developers take advantage of multi-core systems. But Apple synchronizes its OS and SDK releases; you can’t use the Snow Leopard SDK if you want your software to run on pre-Snow Leopard machines.

Apple has invested a lot in these new multi-core SDKs and they clearly view them as a competitive advantage. Apple wants as much OS X software as possible to take advantage of the 8/16/32 core machines that are just around the corner. But that only happens if developers use the new multi-core SDKs, and the best way to ensure that is get their users upgraded to Snow Leopard as soon as possible. Hence, the $29 OS from Apple.

There are not twenty versions of Windows 7 to choose from. Twenty may exist, but 99% of people have three versions to choose from, the others aren’t even available to them.

Martin Gregorie
October 27, 2009 at 3:20 am

You’re comparing apples with oranges.

Installs are always faster than upgrades for all OSen on all platforms because an install doesn’t have to sort through the old cruft and decide which config files are standard and which have been customised.

My last Linux install took 40 minutes for a full development system plus PostgresQL, Open Office, graphics stuff and WINE. The last Linux upgrade I did took 3 hours.

I meant upgrade installs, not clean installs. Why would I be talking about clean installs when the article is about upgrades?

CRSWA
October 27, 2009 at 11:43 am

A close friend of mine works at Microsoft and last Friday he decided to upgrade one of his office machines to 7 from Vista. Keep in mind that this computer was loaded only with software that was approved, provided, and, in most cases, manufactured by Microsoft. Total time to complete the upgrade: almost 7 hours.

ronc
October 27, 2009 at 1:25 pm

I envy your skill. If I switched to Linux it would take years. I’d have to go back to the command line like we did in the 60’s. Granted, once you’re commited to Linux everything is easy and fast. But you have a intimate understanding of what you can and cannot do, so you don’t waste time doing the impossible.

Noche B.
October 26, 2009 at 10:30 pm

For those who speak spanish, check this popular spanish-speaking analyst out, he proposes a way for Microsoft and Apple to offer their OS for free and still make a lot of money using the same concept of an App Store as the iPhone. Thought-provoking…..

Whether people agree with your reasoning or not, I think you hit the nail on the head with MS wanting consumers to buy a new pc instead of upgrading their OS on old machines. MS is desperate to repair their reputation after vista, both for larger consumer market and OEMs. Running a new operating system on a new hardware significantly improves the look and feel on the user end, and the OEMs are only happy to see more people purchasing their machines. And regular consumers/students really will want to buy a new machine with win7 on it already. How much does cheap laptops theses days cost anyway (not a netbook)? 400~500?

Paul
October 27, 2009 at 12:14 am

Right now, I’m still running Windows 2000 on a high-end Pentium III, if any Pentium III can still be called high-end. October saw a huge number of security updates. If a mature and stable product like W2K is still needing that many updates, I’m being pushed even more into switching to Mac, at least for Internet use. Of course, I’m archaic there, too, with a G3 laptop and a G4 tower, both running OS X 10.4, two versions below the current Snow Leopard 10.6, which requires an Intel processor.

It’s nice to hear that W7 is less of a hog than XP. Apple has generally been doing that for a long time, though they tend to require more memory to install newer versions of OS X. OS X 10.4 requires 256 MB, and that allows you to surf the web all right, though you’d want quite a bit more to do music or video editing. (I think the predecessor 10.3 required only 128 MB.)

Every piece of software as complex as an OS will require patches for new exploits throughout it’s entire life.

Paul
October 27, 2009 at 9:41 am

Funny coincidence I had forgotten about before. Earlier last night, before I read this column, I saw an Apple ad making fun of Windows, where a guy looking like Bill Gates was rattling off all the Windows systems that failed to solve the problems of the previous version. I think the only one that wasn’t mentioned (besides very early versions) was Windows 2000.

Nowadays computers are so much cheaper than they were back in 1995, I think I would rather have a new work computer every 3 years with the latest OS and the latest hardware than go through the hassle of upgrading an old machine that is going to struggling with new versions of the rest of my CAD software.

In order to make this strategy seem less wasteful it would be good to see hardware manufacturers getting costs down even lower and focusing on recyclability of parts and innovations to use less material.

Anonymous
October 27, 2009 at 9:17 am

That or computer could be designed to last 10 yrs. The Power Mac G4 tower that I use almost every day is closing in on ten. For slow speed tasks like pulling down Linux ISO’s and backing up computers it is a real workhorse. In fact, because io speeds haven’t actually increased significantly in ten years (Ultra ATA 100) it is not significantly slower doing most every day tasks. Sure I use a new computer for image editing but reality is three years and gone is wasteful no matter how much you recycle. Ideally, we’d see computers last 10 years and then significant parts reused in the next computer with the rest recycled, Apple and it’s ilk just don’t see any money in that.

Garrett
October 27, 2009 at 2:24 am

I question the wisdom of forcing a new computer purchase at this juncture. Microsoft makes no money on the hardware, and a tall percentage arte going to convert to Mac. This is especially true with the migration of corporate applications to web based deployment. If in fact Google (or anyone) can deliver a web based office suite that can open Office file formats, the other half of our affinity to Windows disappears.

Microsoft has grown to become the dragon they slayed – IBM.

Jack North
October 27, 2009 at 7:00 am

tall percentage arte going to convert to Mac – I don’t think so.

l.a.guy
October 27, 2009 at 2:31 am

No doubt MS would prefer users buy new PC’s (got to get that new version office too!) But I think the real reason for the cost difference is something else you mentioned; MS has to provide tech support for the upgrade whereas they’re off the hook for the OEM versions. I’d bet a substantial amount of tech support calls from an upgrade user more than eat up the profit for that license. If it took you seven hours imagine how long the average user is going to take. I’m sure MS has done the math and are expecting a lot of long calls.

It’s a historical accident that OS X is now upgrading for $29; Snow Leopard, after all, offers few new features over Leopard, other than a major speed boost, future-proofing, and daily instant logouts for those still heavily using Rosetta apps. Normally Apple charges around $100 for each new version.

Jesse S.
October 27, 2009 at 5:17 am

7 hours? On Vista hardware it took me about 45 minutes.

danny
October 27, 2009 at 5:19 am

A pointless column that professes a mystery where their is none.

Win OS’s costs so much because MS is a software company and that’s where they make essentially all their money. They need a fat margin. Apple is a hardware company that uses software to attract users. They make they vast majority of their money on their hardware as the profit margin breakouts in their stock report very, very clearly show. They could make more money on interest by putting all their cash in the bank for a year than they do in software sales. It is a wonder that any Apple OS has ever cost more than $29, regardless of its excellence, simply because the money is in the hardware. The software is a loss leader, for MS it is the whole ballgame.

Also, the fact that you mention the SL family pack but not the Win7 family pack (which costs $149 or $50 for 3) is a testament to the intellectual dishonesty of your whole premise. Lame.

Chad
October 27, 2009 at 6:02 am

You missed there. Selling a Snow Leopard license for $29 doesn’t make Apple any hardware profit.

Danny
October 27, 2009 at 9:59 am

@Chad

The point of my post is that Apple does not need to make any profit at all on the software. It is a very small part of the revenue. They could give SL away and it would not have much effect on the bottom line as long as they kept selling hardware.

@James Fox

You may be right historically though the last numbers I saw showed that their server division costs were much lower than that of the client division on nearly the same revenue.

The Fat margin you mention is out of proportion. Take at look at their numbers, their costs (Client Division where Windows is) are only 25% of the selling price, so they take profits of 3x their cost, that is a lot of money. Of course they can charge that much because they are a virtual monopoly.

That kind of Crazy margins are not seen in the rest of the Industry, and that is not because of efficiency it is the reason by they defended so aggressive their monopolistic position.
Take a look at the earnings of their server division where they play in a more competitive environment and see their margins, those are more in tune with the rest of the Industry.

A monopoly, according to the economic theory chooses to charge what maximizes their income, and that would include of course to transfer the support costs to OEMs, because certainly the upgrade costs will be exorbitant given the hard task that is to upgrade to Windows 7 as the writer and most of the customers had found.

A different Russ
October 27, 2009 at 1:09 pm

I think you’re being a bit harsh accusing Bob of being dishonest. Yes, he neglected the Win 7 family pack, at $50 per license. The SL pack comes to about $10 per license, so MS is still charging way more for 7….which was Bob’s point. But I’ll concede that the not-insane price of the family pack makes upgrading a passel of PCs considerably cheaper than replacing them with new units, so points to you too.

danny
October 27, 2009 at 1:38 pm

You are probably right that I was too harsh but I really don’t get not mentioning it. I think that if your argument is that MS does not want you to upgrade but instead just buy PCs you have to somehow explain away the family pack which brings the cost about the same per install as OEMs are said to pay (for a new install) – plus MS is on the hook for tech support.

Tim
October 27, 2009 at 5:35 am

Another angle on it, M$ is sticking it to mac users who want to run win7 on a bootcamp partition or in a VM..

Sunny Guy
October 27, 2009 at 8:55 am

That’s true. A cheap Win 7 upgrade, would help those who want to switch to a Mac.
An expensive, difficult Win 7 upgrade, compels more people to buy new PCs, hence
continuing vendor lock-in for Microsoft.

Sunny Guy

turtleshadow
October 27, 2009 at 5:53 am

The 64 Bit revolution wasn’t televised this time.

I lived through 8,16,32 bit systems and the massive disruptions caused by the so much code being recompiled and the new opportunities for accessing greater quantities of ram and disk. Gone are the day’s of recompiling and debugging timing issues based on clock cycles.

No one is really touting, thank God, that 64 bit is here. This is the first time OS leaps caused by hardware leaps really are submerged. Microsoft really is quiet on 64 bit after the XP fiascos. They really don’t hype it.

The fact is that Hardware has come of age and software is still teething. The capacity and capability of hardware to “tell” the system about itself is amazing compared to all the hardwired problems of decades ago.

After this hardware leap who is going to junk their stuff just for the OS? What is left? Now the typical user will have the capacity to address GB’s of Ram and TB’s of disk and 100’s of Cores assuming they did not buy a crippled motherboard. Really hight speed I/O ports like USB v3 are about to hit and like wireless can be bolted on. GPU capacity is also massive and bolts on.

With Win7 in terms of “real advancement” of OS I only ask — Has it accomplished Trustworthy Computing?

Snow Leopard is $29 for a single license, not $49. What happened to accurate reporting?

David G
October 27, 2009 at 6:05 am

It’s the same strategy that Microsoft used for Exchange 2007. There was 32 bit code in the product, but by telling customers that 64 bit servers were required, the install goes in on a new server . By default the new hardware had way better processing power than an upgrade from an old server. It’s best for Microsoft that the new product perform well. If that hurts the customer’s pocketbook (and is bad for the environment), too bad so sad. That’s the user’s problem, not Microsoft’s.

Jared
October 27, 2009 at 6:10 am

By upgrade, I think the conventional wisdom is to back up your data files and do a clean fresh install on a formatted partition. Saturday morning this took me about an hour… Could be +/- 30 minutes; I was down doing laundry, so I can’t be exact.

I think the best think Microsoft did with Windows 7 was make the Release Candidate version available for install long before the release. After running the RC for several months, and being very satisfied, I went ahead pre-ordered two copies of Professional at a discounted rate of 99 each.

It’s certainly way better than spending 2k+ for a Mac pro or MacBook pro. I’ll never buy a Mac until I can spend ~1k and get a top of the line desktop. Macs have tons of buzz, but in my mind, they haven’t quite crossed the value threshold yet. iMacs and Mac mini are just too gimicky.

I did spend 300 on an iPhone though. Looking forward to an android after the 2yr commit ends. Time to get back into value territory and out of this trendy exclusive market.

Conventional wisdom most likely doesn’t have hundreds of softwares to install…

Jared
October 27, 2009 at 7:30 am

True, that’s my personal PCs. From a work perspective, when the IT dept want to upgrade, ya the majority of them they will do an existing upgrade, however, I specifically tell them, forget that, my data is backed up, give me a clean install.

Jeff Klofft
October 27, 2009 at 6:18 am

My experience was very different. I pre-order from Amazon and paid $49.95. My upgrade to ~90 minutes and virtually all of it was unattended (while I was watch football on Sunday). You must have gotten a “special” version

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. The upgrade is slow because the underlying filesystem and the registry sucks.

Upgrading to Windows 7 is cheaper than previous upgrades were, so it’s not like they are hiking up the prices. On the contrary, I expect they want people to move away from XP, and that’s why they are making it CHEAP.

Of course, Microsoft’s cheap is not Apple’s cheap. Or, rather, it is. Microsoft prices Windows and Office just like Apple prices iPods and iPhones. Each knows its own strenght.

For what I see you have to compare Win7 Ultimate to OSX to make the comparison reasonable.

Its kinda surprising that the North American versions of Windows 7 are not fully bilingual out of the box. You have to buy an ultimate edition to get full localization. Its the 7th edition! In 7 tries Microsoft can’t do this?

OSX comes out of the box with full localization at no extra charge. One has to question Microsoft motivation if good stuff – for society – such as human languages is in the most expensive edition. Even my shampoo bottle has more support for that.

Ken Jackson
October 27, 2009 at 7:32 am

The cost of Windows is probably a truer price of the OS than Snow Leopard. That’s because Apple makes their money on the whole package… the OS, hardware, services, etc… Microsoft’s revenue is directly from the sale of the OS.

Now is Windows really expensive. Well if you compare it to a vendor who really just wants to keep you on its hardware platform, then sure. But if you look at other software packages that have a simliar number of person hours spent on it you’ll find few that cost as little as Windows. Does that justify the cost? Maybe for MS, but maybe not for the consumer. Although in fairness not sure if there are better deals buy software as powerful as Win7, with freedom to run on hardware that I prefer.

Steve young
October 27, 2009 at 8:23 am

Apple Makes its Money On Hardware and software Not just on Software , So Microsoft Makes is Money on ?
Software . If apple only sold Software then you would make money on the OS . Just that simple

Glenn G
October 27, 2009 at 8:27 am

Why all the complaints about the “cost” for Windows 7 upgrade? My gosh, people…
that’s about as nonsequeter as someone whining about the cost to “upgrade” the
motor in an automobile! I can hear all you little whiny ass, want-it-all-for-nothing
spoiled brats now…”I bought this 1985 Ford Fiesta coupe…what do you mean I need
to pay $5000 for a new Ford V-8 engine to put in it? What do you mean it might take
a bit of work, cutting, chopping, re-fitting? I want an engine upgrade for my Ford, it
should be ‘free’!”
Shut up already! If you want free, no one is stopping you from grabbing
a free operating system…just don’t expect all other vendors to give you something useful
for nothing in return.

Glenn G
October 27, 2009 at 8:39 am

I should also point out that the “target market” for the majority of Microsoft Windows 7
sales IS new PC purchasers and OEMs, not “upgrades”…to carry the automobile analogy
(forgive me, I know it’s a worn out analogy) a bit further, you rarely, if ever, see the auto
manufacturers marketing “engine upgrades for existing owners”…and if offered, it is
always at a “premium” price! So, if you’re driving an older auto, you should expect to
have maintainence costs, repairs, etc., similar to an older PC…apply updates and
patches, do your maintainence and keep it running. If you’re ready for a new model,
find one that suits your needs.

Blad_Rnr
October 27, 2009 at 12:51 pm

What I don’t get is that MSFT basically admitted Vista was a dud, and yet they chose to make people pay for the “bug fix” that is Win7. How bad could MSFT possibly be? Win7 should have been free at least for people who paid full price for Vista. MSFT’s OS is the crown jewel that their entire business rests upon. How could they have failed at Vista so badly? Talk about crapping on your customers.

No wonder Apple sold 3M+ Macs last quarter, at 36% margins, in a recession.

[…] write for InfoWorld anymore, not the one who still does–has a post up called “Why Windows 7 Costs So Much.” The piece is not without its obvious flaws–most notably, he keeps saying […]

ydarb
October 27, 2009 at 9:35 am

This article has many false statements and bad facts. Someone should delete it as it makes no sense. I am an Apple user and I used to be a PC user. From both perspectives, the author here seems clueless. Sorry :/

mxs
October 27, 2009 at 10:21 am

Why don’t you tell us how it is then????

shane
October 27, 2009 at 9:52 am

truly spoken like the clueless.

the fact that snow is not a featureless release is unimportant. i won’t argue it with you. lets just assume all the little upgraded and added features aren’t there, shall we?

even if i grant you that, the simple fact that for only $30 i got an increase in speed and gained 8 gigs of drive space is enough for me to buy the product. you don’t need to be sold on it, but i am.

secondly, the fact that Apple is able to actually release updated software at a reasonable pass rather than the MS “it will be out in 2002, ok 2003, 2004 we swear! sorry is it 2007 already? well we cut most of the original features out so it will be here next year we swear!” time table is hardly something to fault Apple with. Maybe you could complain to MS that should try hiring programers?

The only evidence necessary to prove Bob right is the strategic absence of a WinXP-to-Win7 in-place-upgrader. From a coding standpoint, its absence is indefensible: An in-place upgrader existed for XP to Vista, and by now WinXP and the driverset it supports are even more of a known quantity, and hence less of a moving target, than when Vista shipped–and one of Win7’s vaunted improvements over Vista is said to be its drivers. No, the WinTel cartel needs your dollars for hardware *and* software this time.

Just wait till they start making you pay to use Windows by renewable subscription. At least then MS may let your license float free of hardware and not decrement an install or two from your allotment just because you had to replace a bad hard disk or motherboard.

Glenn G
October 27, 2009 at 3:20 pm

TriangleDoor…that’s not without precedent with Windows, however. Look back to the release
of Windows 98…Microsoft did not have a direct “upgrade” from Windows 3.X to Windows 98,
primarily due to the advances in hardware of the day. I think what MS is thinking is that if
your computer is running WinXP, it may only be marginally able to utilize Win 7, so to
prevent an avalance of customer service calls, they decide not to skip a version for the
upgrade.

robin
October 27, 2009 at 11:45 am

I’ve been a Debian GNU/Linux user for the last thirteen or so years and I have no interest or opinion on other operating systems. That said, I took over care of my late wife’s laptop which runs 32 bit vista (on a 64 bit system, cheap oem’s!). While security is still an issue and parts of vista are painfully slow, it seems to be an adequate OS. Of course, I have no intention of upgrading it to W7 as I intend to keep my wife’s work just the way she left it, for our children and grandchildren. I did, however, make one change to make the laptop useful. I cleaned the disk, set a new partition and installed 64 bit Ubuntu 9.04. The whole process from partition to desktop took about 22 minutes.

John
October 27, 2009 at 12:00 pm

One of the problems we have in IT is getting too deep into the details and our own jargon. We forget to look at the big picture, the business perspective. That is what Mr. Cringely does so well. If you are worried about the price of Snow Leopard, you are completely missing the point.

Wintel boxes are designed to last for about 3 years, give or take. At that point the OEM’s and Microsoft want you to buy a whole new system, OS, and Office included. The new versions of the applications and OS usually need more resources, at some point making upgrades impractical.

This model has generally worked well with business customers. However in the last several years the consumer market has become much larger. Consumers are often not inclined to replace their PC’s every 3 years. They may buy a new PC and give the old one to the kids. In the business world we call this cascading assets.

When Vista came along, consumers didn’t run to the store to buy new PC’s, nor did they run to the store to buy Vista upgrades. Those Windows XP systems were working just fine, thank you very much. There was a value problem what do you really get for the cost to move Vista? If you have the applications you need and your system is running well, so you need to upgrade?

The model of replacing PC’s, the OS, and Office every 3 years just does not fit the consumer market. And if I decided to upgrade my PC, I’d reuse my old version of Office. Most of my PC’s are in the 5 to 10 year old class. Most of my neighbors have PC’s that are 3-7 years old. If any of us is going to make a $1000 purchase, it will be for a new TV, or a washer/dryer, or… A new PC will be pretty far down the list. (Yes I know one can buy PC’s for $250-500, but throw in a new monitor, speakers, Office, and a few other things and you’ll be way over $500.)

Now jumping to Apple. They too are mostly in the home. Their OS runs nicely on a lot of their older, slower hardware. I don’t think Apple is hoping we’ll all buy new systems every 3 years. Their products seemed to be designed for much longer service lives. You don’t here Apple customers being on an older OS (Windows ME, 2000, or XP) and worried about losing support. For a mere $29 (or $49?) an Apple user can be on the latest greatest OS.

Now IT friends lets jump to the big business picture… The majority of the PC market is the home user. Apple’s business model is better designed for the home user — longer hardware lives, cheap OS upgrades, low cost Office alternative. Microsoft’s is designed to push more hardware and new software purchases whether you want them or not.

The real question is who is serving the majority of their market better?

Glenn G
October 27, 2009 at 12:57 pm

Hmm, my “new”, albeit a close-out model, Dell Inspiron came with a monitor, speakers,
software, keyboard, mouse, DVD/RW for under $500 last year (June 2008)…
Come on…surely you can do better than that! OIC…the new “iMac”…$599…
ooops…no monitor!!

As for “lasting 10 years” so consumers get their money’s worth…I don’t guess you
counted on my old Pentium 166…it’s 12 years old now…or my old 386DX…18 years
old…and yes, I can still get my email and do some web browsing on them. Oh…
want to know how many times I re-installed an OS on them? None…zero.
The hard drive in the P166 came from my 486DX4 that I’d upgraded from Win31 to
Win95…yep, you guessed it! It still runs Windows 95…no viruses, malware, etc.
in all that time. If I wanted, I could put the 486DX4 back into service, the case is
in the attic! So, would you say that lives up to your requirements for longevity?

Viswakarma
October 27, 2009 at 3:31 pm

Hurrah!!!

Fact Checker
October 27, 2009 at 12:15 pm

C’mon Cringely!

You’ve made a name (infamous for bad info?) for yourself in the big(ish) world of the Web. Please at least take 2 lousy seconds to check your facts. Here, I’ve done it for you this time:

Yup, $29.00 for Snow Leopard. Several readers have pointed this out already, yet the just plain wrong information remains in your article. As has been noted already, the FAMILY PACK of SL is $49.00.

Why be misleading? It damages your credibility, if any, and distracts from the point of your article. (Link bait? I won’t fall for it again.) Do us all a favor, think about what you are saying, do a minimum of research, and splash a little water on your face before you sit down to write in the morning.

That’ll be $49.oo for the fact checking.

BuffaloChuck
October 27, 2009 at 12:40 pm

How could you get the prices for OS X so wrong? It would have taken literally 10 seconds to confirm. Pure laziness.

Again, OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” actually costs US $29 for a single user and $49 for a five-user family pack—not $49/$99.

So much for credibility. You should, at least, correct the blatant error. Any good journalist would.

Make the system use resources, blink pretty lights, cause the public to buy bigger machines that use for web browsing.

We need mini OS that do not do every thing. And cut the power.

Robert Koh
October 27, 2009 at 7:02 pm

I totally agree. hence they are so entrenched in the “enterprise” model. Maybe MSFT even gets a kick back benefit in those ugly stocks that the manufacturer pastes on your laptop whenever you buy one. You already own it, what gives them the right to place advertisement stickies on your product. I once asked the store salesperson why those must be there. Some stupid reason about warranty etc. What BS ! Imagine your brand new BMW came with stickers of Michellin, Borsch, Alpine, Cow leather, Chinese carpeting, etc. all over the hood.

Win7 takes a lot longer to upgrade than Win95 simply because of the Windows Registry. Not only do you have to keep the software around, but you need to create a relatively _clean_ registry with all the software settings the user’s software expects to be there; and sadly, it is very strewn about – especially by companies that enforce license keys (like Microsoft) where one part of the key may be stored in one place in the registry, and another part in another place (repeat half a dozen times).

Of course, this is also probably why Microsoft has started (slowly, but started) to rescind from the registry and push a bit more for applications to do their own files. Now if they would just make an environment variable for where applications can do system-wide settings (e.g. a system version of %APPDATA%), or better yet a per application version (setup by the system program start functionality)…

I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft did want to push it to OEMs instead of doing upgrades. But consider this – that has always been the case with Microsoft. They’ve never really made upgrades easy – at least since Windows 95. They probably don’t understand how to, and the API stack they’ve promoted since Win95 doesn’t lend itself well to upgrades either. That may be changing some with Vista/Win2008/Win7 as they are starting to do more system maintenance stuff – e.g. storing a link to a specific version of a DLL and enabling applications to be able to differentiate between versions and select/load the correct version. But they still have a long ways to go, and you STILL have the whole registry issue to deal with, which doesn’t get any better.

john
October 27, 2009 at 1:14 pm

agreed osx or whatever apple os costs less than win7. Considering I need to buy a mac book, the least one I get is 999) or a pc that I can get 1/3 of the mac price.

You need to consider the mac and pc cost also. The comparison is pure BS.

MacGregor
October 28, 2009 at 6:10 pm

So a $350 pc laptop is comparable to a MacBook?!?!? You are not a intellectually honest person and if you have to add the cost of the hardware, then you have to add the cost of maintenance and life cycle and longevity and at that point the Mac easily comes out ahead and has a smaller cost of ownership.

So go buy your Dell netbook and eat at McDonalds and purchase your socks at Big K by the bushel and pretend you are not forcing the race to the bottom.

Carling
October 29, 2009 at 12:36 pm

MacGregor What world are you living in. Sorry I forgot there are three worlds out there. The Controlled Apple Mac World. The Controlled Microsoft World, and The FOSS World,

You are not being intellectually honest with yourself. Come on wake up, wake up, it’s day break the sun is rising, As I remember it in my religious teachings Adam and Eve where in the Garden of Eden when Adam went to pick a apple from the forbidden tree, when god said thou shouldn’t pick from this tree, Eve then persuaded Adam to pick the apple and take a bite from it, saying that he would become greater than God, it happens that was not the truth for which he soon found out,

For those that picked and took a bite from Mac’s Apple have and will pay dearly for their wrong choice, Like Adam believed Eve, it is not the truth, when all was revealed, they became powerless had no choice they was lead down the slippery slop, of being conned into the glitz and glamor of eye candy, what they thought it might be,

The morel of this story is proprietary hardware is worse than proprietary software, but when you get both proprietary hardware and software in the same package then that package you purchased does not belong to you, You have no control what so ever with what you bought and thought you owned, For that bite of the Mac Apple you are under Mac’s control, they tell you where you can have your Mac repaired, they tell you that you have to buy all their overpriced accessories, you have to buy all Mac over priced application software from them, and you can’t run their software on a none Mac System,

Yes we will go buy our Dell Netbooks, Notebooks, Laptops and Desktops and eat at McDonalds and purchase our socks at Big K by the bushel and save money in the bargain, and know we are not facing the race to the bottom. Because we know it’s not that far to the top and that last hill is not that steep, though it is steep enough that Mac and MS are sliding down it fast and furious. All because of FOSS, One day in the future you may thank us free thinking people

Hmm, if Apple is so much more expensive, how come virtually all the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) studies of Macs versus PCs have always come out in favor of Apple?

Sure, the initial outlay is more for a Mac. Undeniably. But, it will last longer (since Apple doesn’t peddle low-end crap), and will give less troublesome service. Isn’t less troublesome worth SOMETHING?

Scott
November 3, 2009 at 7:26 am

The thing missing from your comment is choice.

What apple gives you in stability is because of limited choice, limited freedom. Which to me is the reason i will never buy a mac.

What would you rather have? A os that i can use on any system (netbook to super computer) or a couple of fixed PC’s so its “less troublesome”

Personally i like my freedom. I also believe this is why Windows won the fight. It in my mind is a far better product.

Also realize that Apple does not make there own hardware anymore, its the same equipment we have in our Windows PC’s today and quite a lot of the hardware Apple uses is actually, cheap. This is why Apple is making a huge profit.

bboucher
October 30, 2009 at 7:00 pm

Carling, Your religious teaching has Adam picking an Apple from a tree? Sounds more like a made up tale. Check your reference (Bible). Blogs are interesting but not very useful as an accurate source of information. ….. I have a friend who’s brothers friend ……..

Paul Allen
October 27, 2009 at 1:20 pm

Who cares if he got the price of OS X slightly wrong? It doesn’t change the point of the article. People shouldn’t be so nit-picky.

I don’t know if its even worth it for me to get an upgrade. I need to look into what Windows 7 has to offer before taking the plunge. In terms of buying a new PC, my Toshiba laptop is pretty new (less than a year old) so I’m not going to toss this out anytime soon. I love Mac but they are too rich for my blood. I paid $400 or so for this laptop where a Mac would be four times the price.

Bill Burkholder
October 28, 2009 at 5:52 am

The upfront cost of a Mac can be more than a PC, but the long term cost of ownership can be a LOT lower.

Add a virus protection app, an anti-spyware app, an anti-adware app, a decent productivity package like Office, and suddenly the price goes up. Then, figure in costs of your TIME as well as the actual cost to get the PC troubleshot and repaired when it fails with some cryptic user-proof error message.

I have a house full of old G4 and G5 Macs from 1999, 2004, and 2005 that still work fine, and I’ve never had to pay to have them serviced. I’ve been able to troubleshoot them easily, with Apple’s great phone support. Oh, and since OS X came out, we have never had any viruses, malware, or other crapware on any of our four Macs, even though none of them runs any anti-anything stuff.

The PC on the same home net, behind the same firewall, has been attacked several times, despite running SAV and a couple of other anti-attack bastard slow-it-downware apps. And we’ve probably spent enough at the tech support counter getting it fixed to pay for another Mac…

I’ve used Macs and PCs since the mid-1980s, and I can tell you I use the Mac because I want to, but I (only) use the PC because I have to.

Scott
November 3, 2009 at 7:43 am

“Add a virus protection app, an anti-spyware app, an anti-adware app, a decent productivity package like Office, and suddenly the price goes up. Then, figure in costs of your TIME as well as the actual cost to get the PC troubleshot and repaired when it fails with some cryptic user-proof error message. ”

“I have a house full of old G4 and G5 Macs from 1999, 2004, and 2005 that still work fine”

Just like my PC has had no issues, the key is understanding. Look around you can still get a working 486 no problem.

“since OS X came out, we have never had any viruses, malware, or other crapware on any of our four Macs, even though none of them runs any anti-anything stuff.”

How would you know if you have nothing to detect it? Also do you realize that Apple officially tells you to get anti virus software.

“The PC on the same home net, behind the same firewall, has been attacked several times, despite running SAV and a couple of other anti-attack bastard slow-it-downware apps. And we’ve probably spent enough at the tech support counter getting it fixed to pay for another Mac…”

Common sense goes a long way. Don’t download anything that you didn’t ask to be downloaded. The most common way malicious software is installed is by the user downloading it and running it. This can happen just as easily on a mac. The only difference is the PC has the biggest market share meaning they are targeted the most.

Id be willing to bet if all the Virus makes in the world wrote a equivalent virus for a mac that they’d be far worse off, at least Microsoft has had the experience and time to learn.

I’m currently typing this from my custom built PC running Windows 7 which i think is absolutely brilliant. If you spend more time using it you’ll realize that a huge amount of work has been done. For instance when you plug in a new device it will quite probably already have its driver! I had to install no motherboard drivers.

Also, when i was using the beta i had a couple of issues, it pop’d up with a window explaining the problem and asking me if it could find a solution to save me the hassle. This is in Windows 7.

With Windows, even if you purchase a boxed edition of the latest offering, you can
download Service Packs for free for the support life of that operating system…ie.
Windows XP…I run SP2, if I want I can download and install SP3 for free.

Compare that to Mac OSX…Apple has been charging over $100 for what basically
amounts to “service packs”, and the latest “service pack”, code name Snow Leopard
“only costs $29″, if you’ve already applied prior patches to OSX 10.5.

Hopefully, Microsoft will NOT take a page from the “How To Screw Your Fanbois and
GET THEM TO PAY FOR IT!” book by Steve Jobs!

Jim
October 27, 2009 at 4:23 pm

Ha, talk about being overlooked. Lets see, Microsoft puts out Vista, which everyone will agree is crap. How much did all those Vista users pay? Now, Microsoft corrects Vista, calls it 7 and charges you full price. Everyone knows 7 is what Vista was supposed to be. You don’t actually think Microshaft started over do you, haha. So, all these Wintards say, wow! we got ourselves a new OS, yippie. Really, 7 should have been offered as an SP to Vista cause that is all they did is clean it up, add a few touches and re-sell it to the tards. How genious. This is all a product of the herd effect. Wintards are so blind they don’t even see how they are getting taken. On top of that, they actually defend the act despite the fact you put it in their face to read, lol. Microshaft knows exactly what they are doing cause they know their customers, know their customers spending habits and their inability to look past their wallets when making purchases. And the herd moves on. Lol.

Greg
October 28, 2009 at 6:34 am

I’m not sure what the point is here.

Most people know that MS have iteratively developed every OS they’ve released and that a lot of the core code goes back many years. Why would they start again? That would be pointless, but it doesn’t mean it’s the same OS by any stretch.

As you say, Vista was largely viewed as a spectacular failure, and so releasing Windows 7 as a Vista SP would have been just about the dumbest move they could have made, since everyone hanging back on XP would not have upgraded and the development man hours gone into the numerous changes they made (which for the most part people agree is a substantial improvement) would have a smaller user base, and generated very little comparative income.

No releasing this as Windows 7 was a smart move, since they could put the disaster that Vista is behind them, and with so much positive spin on Windows 7 they’ll probably succeed in getting a lot of XPs base migrated off. Bobs article is especially interesting, because most people who have Vista have recently purchased new PCs, and I would think THAT would be the user base MS would be keen to get moved.

I’m not a MS fan by any stretch, but just bashing the company for anything it does without weighing the pro’s and con’s of what they’ve actually achieved is more than a little pathetic.

I for one am waiting for the dust to settle on the initial launch and see how the OS stands up over time.

PS: You managed to spell ‘genius’ wrong. Oops.

Mike
October 28, 2009 at 2:49 pm

Greg, you were doing fine until you tried to play proofreader. (Something about people in glass houses not throwing stones.) Pointing out the misspelling of “genius” was irrelevant to your rebuttal, bordering on smug. One shouldn’t chide others’ misspellings, however, when one misuses possessive apostrophes, e.g., “pro’s” and “con’s.” Neither of those words are possessives, and should have appeared as “pros” and “cons.” You might also brush up on comma usage, e.g., your “I for one…” should be “I, for one,…”

On a more positive note, this Windows vs. Mac version of the Hatfields and McCoys feud illustrates that both companies have accomplished what all brands aspire to: fierce loyalty.

Steve Dean
October 27, 2009 at 8:20 pm

You can download Microsoft service packs until such time as Microsoft determines that your copy of XP/Vista/7 is bootleg. Then you have to purchase a new copy.

MacGregor
October 28, 2009 at 6:18 pm

Glenn you have no clue about Mac OSX.

Those every other year upgrades are not service packs. They are upgrades with 100’s of new items, not fixing of mistakes. Those come with free upgrades that take little time and never producing problems or kernel crashes.

I managed a computer lab with half pc’s and half macs and the pc’s always cost more to upgrade, maintain, staff to answer questions and time to troubleshoot. And the public gravitated to the macs.

Glenn’s point is still valid and you’re technically violating the EULA if you upgrade wiht the $29 package from Tiger to Snow Leopard…. But, yeah – you can do it (if your hardware supports it) and it will work great.

Have to not criticize your perception of the “upgrade vs. service pack” model.
But I have to call you out on the “Apple Fanboiz” statement.
There are also a lot of Apple Fangurls that also don’t really care, because the minimal dollars that are spent to keep our “Toy Machines” up to date keep us gainfully employed in jobs where creativity and efficiency are necessary. It is difficult for our employers to outsource creativity.
The days of the “Windows Registry Wizards” are gone … Dell, etc. ,have outsourced support to people who read from scripts, etc. – Plenty of stories on those situations ..
I may see you sometime in a WalMart with a sign saying “Will Tweak Windows Registry Settings for Game Speed for Food” –
I might just toss you a couple of dollars to clear the tears from your eyes.
Windows are meant to be closed sometimes … Good luck – hope you enjoy endless hours of …

Glenn G
October 27, 2009 at 2:44 pm

Hehe…BHP, you make me laugh! Actually, I’m very much employed, but not in any sort
of I.T. field. You don’t know me, so I don’t expect you to know my profession. I’ll keep an
eye out for you with the sign around your neck “Will unlock your iPhone so you can use
whatever network you desire for food”! <{;-)

BHP
October 27, 2009 at 2:54 pm

Had to do it …
Made my day – I hope whatever you do is successful for you –
I’m eating also, but a lot of people aren’t.
If we couldn’t exchange comments and observations, it would be a boring world.
Let’s find another blog ( Apple vs. Microsoft is a totally fun diversion ) – but there are more important things in the world to debate.
See you in the “Blogosphere” –
Take Care -

Glenn G
October 27, 2009 at 3:07 pm

Hehe…yeah, I know! We sometimes take life too seriously! And I really did laugh! Your
comment was funny…except for some personal feelings about Walmart, but this is NOT
the time or place.

I’ll give you a hint of my profession…it’s one that I hope you never really need, BUT the
vast majority of people do at some point. I interact with others in similar fields to
hopefully benefit people. Some people think those in my profession know how to read
ancient Egyptian heiroglyphics due to some of the things we decipher…

C U L8R!
Glenn aka Wiz <{;-)

Robert Koh
October 27, 2009 at 7:10 pm

Why would any rational human want to unlock their iPhone just to use another SIM card (in the same country) AFTER signing a 2 year contract. Aren’t you doubling up your monthly cost? If you do not want to sign a contract, then go to France, Singapore or HK and buy a contract free iPhone and pay the “full price”, and then insert you T Mobile SIM card (still can’t be use in Verizon’s weird non GSM system and hope you are happy. And when you get tired of T Mobile, you can then switch to AT&T. But wait, you could have started with AT&T in the first place and pay a much lower up front cost in the first place !

bradi
October 28, 2009 at 11:25 am

@Glenn G & BHP: glad you guys did that “chummy” thing – but I do want to point out something that was glossed over. With Windows you get the Service Packs free; and Glenn incorrectly likens those to the OS X revisions 10, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, etc. Actually Glenn – OS X has service packs (some “just” bug fixes) too. For example, Tiger went to 10.4.11. Again, some of those 11 revisions were very small bug fixes, but some were noteworthy fixes / improvements just as Windows SPs are intended to be. Oh – and they’re all free. 10.1 was free too; of course it really was necessary to make 10 a fully functional OS.

I do like that the two of you didn’t devolve into trolls though.

Glenn G
October 27, 2009 at 3:01 pm

Oh, BHP, forgot to mention…I do sometimes close the windows! I don’t feel the need
to promote my old website, so I don’t have a link to it, most of it is getting way old now.
In previous comment I mentioned my old P166…many a time I use it running in just
plain old DOS to access the web, do my email, telnet to a couple of BBSes.
Anyhow, I don’t really care what computer a person uses…I’ve used a multitude of OSes
myself…I don’t see a need to proselytize and evangelize the rest of the internet to use
some perceived “best OS in the world”…if it works for me, cool…if it works for you,
that’s cool! If not, maybe we can try something else. At this moment, I’m using
Opera 9.64 on WinXP SP2…in a few minutes, it might be AIX, or MS DOS 6.22, or
Windows 3.1. My operating system is not a religious object to be worshipped, prayed
to nor sacrificed for.
<{;-)

BHP
October 27, 2009 at 3:20 pm

“My operating system is not a religious object to be worshipped, prayed
to nor sacrificed for.”

Amen – seems like you’ve seen as many as I have –

Too many people get worked up over the “quality” or “cost” of the tools they use …

Wait another five years – same conversations on something we will not have conceived of.

Thanks for your comments -

Esteban
October 27, 2009 at 3:18 pm

So you wanna make me believe that if I update my old AMD Semprom from XP to 7 it’ll free more resources for app’s to run. Really? I doubt it.
Do you have any experiment to fund your affirmations?

Crazy Henaway
October 29, 2009 at 5:46 am

Actually, having run 7 on my own old AMD Sempron (2500+, 1.4GHz), it WAS slightly snappier than XP, the only problem I encountered is the ancient ATi Radeon 9250 video card wasn’t supported. It wasn’t supported by Vista either. And that was with just 1GB of RAM.

With much older machines, checking hardware compatibility (hey! Just like linux!) is important.

Glenn G
October 27, 2009 at 3:36 pm

Hey people! You know, NONE of us have answered Bob’s question about why it took him longer to upgrade to Win 7 from XP compared to upgrading Win31 to Win95! So…I’ll answer him! Don’t know, maybe I’m one of the few that actually used Win31 and Win95 on the same machine!

Bob, the answer is quite simple…it takes longer because we as computer users expect Microsoft to still support all those old legacy hardware addons, software, peripherals, etc.!
Not only the old stuff that may still be attached via some long forgotten serial or parallel port, but any new stuff running via USB, infrared, WIFI, etc.! Having to sniff the system to detect all possible hardware combinations in the “pc” world takes time. Plus, we as users typically have a lot more “stuff” attached to and communicating with our “pc” now compared to 1995. Hardware has also increased exponentially in capacity…when Win95 arrived, it was typical to be running on a hard drive under 525 megabytes, not gigabytes. Many pcs possessed 8 to 16 megabytes of RAM, not 2 to 8 gigabytes.

There…that should answer Bob’s parting question!
<{;-)

Steve Dean
October 27, 2009 at 8:28 pm

That makes no sense. The current crop of 2.4Ghz Dual-Core chips are much faster than a 66mhz 486. I bet in the Microsoft demo they even swapped 12 floppies to load Win ’95.

steveorevo
October 27, 2009 at 4:08 pm

Have you actually tried a fresh install of Vista + Service Pack 1 + Service Pack 2 + Misc. ‘updates’ on a new box?

Its actually VERY snappy. It tells you something when the ‘updates’ within the first six months of release are larger then the initial installer.

Microsoft was playing catch-up and Windows 7, aside from new window-manager effects is just Vista repackaged with all the aforementioned ‘updates’ minus more dollars from your pocket.

Vista’s initial release was practically unusable on my system, not to mention the registry bloat one gets over time. I challenge you to wipe, reinstall Vista, then hook up to the net and get gigabytes of ‘updates’ and compare that to Windows 7. Tom’s hardware review clearly showed (although not comparing Vista SP2, but rather SP1 to Windows7) the comparison is marginal at best.

I agree with Robert, in that it is true, however, that with Apple its about the software (its about the software stupid!) and that is the reason why the resale value of a dated mac mini PPC still beats the pants off a WinTel of the same era (you’d have to pay to actually get rid of the WinTel -or just run *nix on it and stick it in a closet).

How else could Apple justify marginally-decent hardware specs? Its because unlike the cutting-edge, brand new WinTel box, the drivers and hardware have been vetted.

So take your choice, have last year’s hardware with software that ‘just works’ or the cutting-edge paperweight that may eventually work when joe-schmoe OEM gets around to updating the drivers and by then will have no market value what-so-ever. Just make sure you have a few bottles of aspirin handy…

For heaven sake. For the cost of a download (that would be $0 for those of you from California) I’ve got a more stable, less virus prone OS with more applications than any of you for however many dollars you spend. Oh and, by the way, it’ll run on MAC or PC or ARM or Coldfire or PIC or anyone of a dozen types of hardware. Last MB I bought had it in the BIOS!!

Save your money and make your life easy. Get a Penguin and toss your big cat out the windows….

Bill Burkholder
October 28, 2009 at 6:09 am

It is ALL about getting things done with a painless, worry-free user experience.

I want to do my computing without thinking about the computer. That’s why I’ll pay more for a Mac. It’s worth it to me not to have to think about what I’m doing, and what’s in the way of it.

Maybe the hardware isn’t “bleeding edge,” but I’m okay with that. I’d rather have a Toyota on the turnpike than a Chevy in the shop.

I’ve watched some friends try to upgrade their three-year-old PCs from XP Pro SP3 to Win 7, and it has not been pretty. One guy’s wife told him to go down to the Apple store and buy a Mac after he spent his entire Saturday trying to get their PCs running stably with the new OS. They still can’t print from their PCs to their old HP printer, but their new iMac can! The guy was amazed when he told me it took all of about 20 minutes to get his iMac configured, and about an hour to move all his data over.

bradi
October 28, 2009 at 11:34 am

Dude, don’t make fun of my Chevy – it stays on the highway just fine, not in the shop. No turnpikes around here though……. ; – )

More importantly: the “approved” automotive metaphor for Apple’s Mac is a BMW not a Toyota. Were talking driving / computing “machine” here!

A different Russ
October 28, 2009 at 2:19 pm

Last I heard, there is no upgrade path from XP to 7, you have to do a clean install, or XP to Vista to 7, which would be insane. A fresh install of 7 is a breeze, took me an hour or so on a four year old box, and most of that was unattended, didn’t have to babysit it like an XP install. If it took your buddy all day to configure 7 and install his apps, that’s hardly Microsoft’s fault.

I’ve had a scanner quit working after installing the latest flavor of OS-X. Even though Apple was still selling that model on their website, there were no updated drivers for it. Compatibility with old hardware is always a crapshoot, regardless of OS.

Jim
October 27, 2009 at 4:26 pm

Ha, talk about being overlooked. Lets see, Microsoft puts out Vista, which everyone will agree is crap. How much did all those Vista users pay? Now, Microsoft corrects Vista, calls it 7 and charges you full price. Everyone knows 7 is what Vista was supposed to be. You don’t actually think Microshaft started over do you, haha. So, all these Wintards say, wow! we got ourselves a new OS, yippie. Really, 7 should have been offered as an SP to Vista cause that is all they did is clean it up, add a few touches and re-sell it to the tards. How genious. This is all a product of the herd effect. Wintards are so blind they don’t even see how they are getting taken. On top of that, they actually defend the act despite the fact you put it in their face to read, lol. Microshaft knows exactly what they are doing cause they know their customers, know their customers spending habits and their inability to look past their wallets when making purchases. And the herd moves on. Lol.

I remember the pain involved installing windows 95 from DOS and the added pain of trying to find drivers for your sound, graphics and modem… those were the days!

I love the multi-touch on windows 7 and the split screen view to compare to documents, very nice.

kr
October 27, 2009 at 6:18 pm

Install time as a marketing tactic? I dunno about that one, although I do agree about the upgrading PC point–I noticed a lot of offers for a free upgrade to Windows 7 with the purchase of a new PC, like Lenovo for example

While it also took me 7 (maybe that’s why it’s called Windows 7 ) hours to make a clean install, whenever I finally made it to the desktop, my PC was *incredibly* slow. Since I had been running Windows XP (32-bit) on my Core 2 Duo, I hadn’t bothered to flash my BIOS. As soon as I flashed my BIOS, everything was blazing. I’m not positive but I feel pretty sure that if I were to do another install of Windows 7 with this updated BIOS, it’d take me half the time.

Students can buy a windows 7 upgrade for $30 in USA, $40 in Canada. So if the point is to make consumers buy new computers, and students make up a big part of the customer base, why are they exempt?
I’ve got a simpler explanation: the windows OS has always been expensive to buy, because Microsoft charges what they can make off it. To my recollection the Vista upgrade was about the same price when it came out. Furthermore, Microsoft has a huge marketing operation to feed off the work of the handful of programmers actually responsible for the OS. So I imagine that defines a pretty lofty floor price.

Paul
October 28, 2009 at 4:40 am

Microsoft didn’t advertise that there is no upgrade path from Vista to the 64 bit version of Windows 7. To get to 64 bit, you need to perform a complete reinstall of all of your applications and a reconfiguration of the entire system.

Though I would have preferred to run the 64 bit version on my dual core Dell D630, I was in a hurry to get a stable system. So I choose the easier route to run the multi-hour upgrade to the 32 bit version of Windows 7 Professional. That was a mistake.

I’m guessing that Vista baggage (probably registry) was carried into the Windows 7 installation. Every few hours, the computer freezes (sometimes even the mouse will freeze). If the mouse can still move and I wait two to ten minutes the computer may come back to life (about 50% of time). But when I give up and crash it via the power button, it takes a LOT more time to boot than the typical slow.

Yesterday, I discovered an error message that stated that it crashed upon trying to recover from hibernate (which is interesting because I had left it in “sleep”). It took over 30 minutes to get a desktop.

And yes, the entire OS has also crashed (vs freeze) while using the new IE.

Needless to say, I’m giving up on this upgrade. This weekend I’ll wipe it, and create a fresh install of the 64 bit version and a reinstall/reconfigure everything.

That failing, I’m sure glad that I have a spare license for Windows XP professional.

ronc
October 28, 2009 at 12:48 pm

Choose the “custom install” option. That’s the best way to install a new OS. Of course you need to backup your data and reinstall your apps but it will be a “clean install” in the end.

I haven’t done the upgrade yet, but my clean installs have all been reasonably fast. Oh, and I paid $29.99 for mine with the student discount.

David W
October 28, 2009 at 7:49 am

The main reason why WIndows is so expensive: Because Microsoft cannot get the idea that good software can be cheap or even free. If Windows 7 is so good, it must be expensive.

I was just reading an article on Microsoft’s reaction to the success of Android. They don’t get it. They’re absolutely confused. As former Windows mobile partner after partner abandons Windows Mobile for Android, Microsoft’s reaction is of complete perplexment. “But, the OS is free!”, they keep saying, “It can’t be any good. How is Google making money on it? That means Google will not support it.”

You can see it in their sneery Linux comments. “Linux isn’t a real operating system because it’s free.”

Windows will always be the dominant desktop OS. The absolute worst case scenario is Apple seizing about 15% of the desktop market with Linux Distros seizing another 5%. That’ll leave the Windows monopoly with a nice 80% share which is bigger than Apple’s share of the MP3 market.

Unfortunately, it is the mobile market place where the action is, and Microsoft is simply AWOL. Windows Mobile is fourth behind Mac OS X (iPhone/iPod Touch), Symbian, and RIM’s BlackBerry. By the end of next year, they’ll be fifth behind Andriod. If Palm get’s its act together — sixth place.

Microsoft’s three prong attack on the mobile market: Windows Mobile 7, Project Pink, and the “Zune Phone” have all fallen due to corporate infighting and simply not understanding that people no longer care about Windows. Even Internet Explorer, the weapon Microsoft once used to almost successfully take over the Internet has become irrelevant. WebKit is the dominant browser technology on the mobile scene (used by Android, iPhone, and PalmPre), and becoming HTML5 compatible is more important than being able to run .NET, Silverlight, or even old ActiveX websites.

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, users of Netscape saw thousands of Websites with the message “This site viewed best with Internet Explorer”. Now, it is the IE users who are seeing this message.

Studabaker was one of the top horse carriage makers in the 19th century marketplace. IBM was the dominant computer maker for the mainframe world for the last half of the 20th century. Microsoft Windows is now the proud owner of the dominant desktop operating system for the first decade of the 21st century. The question is whether that means anything when the next decade comes rolling around.

ronc
October 28, 2009 at 12:58 pm

“Now, it is the IE users who are seeing this message.” Could you provide a link to an example? And which browser do they say “viewed best with…”?

Brett
October 28, 2009 at 8:38 am

Triumph of the Nerds: I remember you signing off at the end, something about “see you again in 10 years”. Isn’t it time for another video? =) Thanks again for that excellent piece! I love the video and share it with many!

Gerardo Molina
October 28, 2009 at 9:28 am

It seems that you will have to implement captcha to avoid the spam link as commenter names.

ronc
October 28, 2009 at 1:02 pm

Great idea. I vote for that. Or just give some mods the power to delete spam posts and the word “fanboi”

Vinay
October 28, 2009 at 11:10 am

My upgrade from Vista to 7 took me 30-45min – not sure why it took you 7 hours.

You can also get the Windows 7 Family Pack for 149.99. That brings the price back down to $50 each. If you’re going to use the Family Pack price for OS X you have to use it for Win7. But we all know that, looking strictly at cost per copy, linux beats them both.

tudorcitydweeb
October 28, 2009 at 12:44 pm

sheesh. you PC vs Mac guys are like nascar rednecks i grew up with in the south who are still arguin’ ford vs chevy. or like phobes afraid to work around non-hets. or just angry whiners.

as dir of IT for large ad agency, pls note:

– we have a 75/25 Mac/PC split. our creatives use Macs, the execs use PCs.

– we pay an avg 33% more for Macs than we do PCs. mainly due to better Apple monitors to enable/ensure color calibration/matching, + fast processors and 16 gigs of ram to render graphics.

– in last 6 yrs, 86% of our IT support time was devoted to supporting those 25% PCs. but hardly ever due to hardware problems; it’s what we call the “software wars”. MS vs Adobe vs whatever. plus virus protection, which we call the “valley of tears”.

– our creatives do most of their own updates and upkeep on their Macs. they are paid way less than my MCSEs.

– i do not allow vista in our company. not after 2 disastrous Dells with Vista print spooler dilemmas and a general creeping machine malaise. win 7 is thus years away for us.

– my 10-yr old son just updated his iMac to Snow Leopard. i watched.

ronc
October 28, 2009 at 1:11 pm

When it comes to the Mac guys, I can’t help but think “Thou doest protest too much.” It’s like they are continually trying to justify their decision to themselves.

Yeah, Glenn G is a liar … even with his chummy nature … just as I’m sure Lou Dobbs is a very nice person to his daughters immigrant horse trainers.

Lyle Howard Seave
October 28, 2009 at 6:38 pm

I was debating whether I should buy a new desktop 2 years ago when Vista came out since we had 5 computers in the house but none would work well with Vista.
Then my 15 yr old neighbour gave me a Linux CD. I had tried it a few years ago and thought the UI was still lacking but this time around was a different story.
Short story, forward to Vista 7’s release and we have added two netbooks to the familys loot since then and ALL the machines now run Linux. We keep a copy of XP virtualized for the few PC games that the kids still want to play (Chessmaster, David Douillet Judo, Spore).
ive used every Windows OS since DOS and even Mac at work (Mac 8 and 9 were absolute garbage)
and the switch wasnt very difficult. DIfferent but not difficult.
The big difference is the desktops (Linux offers more than one) have matured and the one I use called KDE (which is more familiar to Windows converts) is as good as both the OS 10 and Vista7.
And while I use Mandriva2009 with KDE4.3 desktop, I also use lighter desktop for my 8-10 year old desktop and Thinkpad so not only do I have a top notch OS which gets updated/bug fixed every day, I also get a new OS version every 6 months.. for FREE and I am also very green since I dont have to buy a new computer when I can extend the lives of the ones I have.
With the economy, kids and so on, free is nice but free that works well and gives me piece of mind, that’s priceless.

So Windows 7 can be half the price and I still see no reason to switch back (ive installed the RC7) since Vista made me realize that it is now possible to have a great desktop for no money down and no payment. Just like I realized earlier that Firefox was as good/better than IE and that paying for Word was silly since Open Office did everything I needed.

My father has been a penguinista since last year and my mom received her first computer ever this spring, a 2nd hand Acer laptop/tank i bought online for 150$ (it has no battery but mom doesnt travel and this thing is too heavy for her to lug around anyways). Dad had been an XP user since he retired about 8-9 years ago but mom is in her 70s and never touched a computer before.
She now surfs the net, emails, listens to music while she cooks and IM her friends and Skype’s all the time and KDE’s configurability is perfect for bad vision…

It truly is easy enough for people from 7 to 77 to use.
Why would we go back to paying and me spending my time doing the virus/malware upgrade/clean. dance again?
Heck, Im willing to pay so I never have to do that ever gain.

Thanks Vista, you made me realize that I dont need you anymore.

Anz
October 29, 2009 at 4:43 am

You are right.

I’m using since 4 years on my Laptop only Linux. In the past Mandriva(because of support) but now i’m switched to Ubuntu. And i’m really happy with it.

On my Standart PC is Windows 7 installed, but i get it for free, and need it for some games or when I have to support people at home in Win7. Normally i’m even there using Linux.

There is only one thing i’m missing on Linux (and the reason why win7 is installed), better Game Support trough WINE or good native Linux games.

How does a tech writer, who expects to have ANY cred, screw up the prices that bad? Lazy ass moron.

Clay Berlo
October 29, 2009 at 5:34 am

Microsoft’s strategy does seem to work. From my experience, even if you try to invoke the “refund the OS” clause of the Microsoft EULA to get rid of Windows (and install something useful like Linux), you have to fight tooth and nail just to get a paltry sum back. Microsoft knows how to make its customers very happy (as long as those customers remain Dell, HP, etc.). Unfortunately, Microsoft’s misinformation campaigns and massive advertising budget keep end-users from realizing they do have other viable options. Microsoft will continue to rake in the massive profits as long as end-users are never presented with something else that’s “good enough”.

paul
October 29, 2009 at 8:30 am

I’m guessing that another reason is the profusion of VM installs. I’m not going to buy a new computer just to get windows. But I do run XP in Virtualbox on my sidux (Linux) install and in Parallels on my employer’s Macbook. At some point I might have to upgrade the VMs, but I’m hoping the client that I need to have windows for will stay on XP for a long time. I really don’t like the idea of changing over to windows “L”. (Great comment there, Bob.)

Kevin
October 29, 2009 at 8:49 am

What Microsoft needs is a feature in their OS that is linked to a software library that is validated by peer review of the source code featured in said library. This way, if I need a free app or shareware or whatever for a project due tomorrow, I don’t accidentally download a spyware/virus riddled software. If it’s not in the library, I don’t download it. They could call it a Microsoft Software Suppository, or Suppo for short.

[…] Micro$oft in fact innovates — in everything except tech. Like tax cheating and other dishonest behavior. And look, the leader in innovation just discovered what kind of show “Family Guy” is! This, after spending millions for a special Win7-selling episode. Genius! More about that here. The truth about Win 7 is here. […]

altNull
October 30, 2009 at 6:04 am

SWITCH TO LINUX! Unless your gaming (3-d intensive like COD 4, TF2, ect) or using highly specialized engineering/scientific software, then just go LINUX. The cost to you is no more than $3 for bandwidth, hard drive space, a blank Dvd-RW, and time spent installing (unless your Bill Gates or Steve Jobs/Ballmer). Most people claim that’s too complicated, but that’s just a lazy excuse. If you need help, there are way better forums, tutorials, and guides for any major Linux distro as compared to “main stream” operating systems. Ubuntu is easy, faster, and more secure than either Windows or OS X. So the real question is – can you afford to be lazy?

ploeg
October 30, 2009 at 7:42 pm

In this case, Bob is a little bit too intent to ascribe design to Microsoft behavior when there is none. Microsoft is perfectly fine with people upgrading. In fact, Microsoft is currently selling a Windows 7 Family Pack that allows you to upgrade up to 3 PCs for $149.95. The reason why Microsoft isn’t as aggressive in pushing upgrades as Bob thinks they should be is that Microsoft doesn’t think that they need to be that aggressive at this point. They think that they can charge this much and still get a sufficient number of users to switch from XP. Bob might think that they’re mistaken (as I do), but that’s the extent of their calculation.

Bill Chipman
October 31, 2009 at 12:22 pm

Good luck finding the Family upgrade package. I checked 4 Best Buys and 3 Frys with no luck. Then I tried Amazon, no luck there either. Amazon shows the Family Pack as not likely to be available any time soon, or words to that effect. Surprise, I was able to order it from Microsoft. Mark me as agreeing with Bob. MS makes their money on OEM copies of Win7, not upgrades, esp. for businesses.

MichaelB
November 3, 2009 at 8:34 am

I found Costco was carrying the family pack upgrade. I think I paid either $119 or $129 for it…

Fast Fred
October 31, 2009 at 5:56 am

Another reason…..I keep saying on all the web sites…. Microsoft is a software company, that’s where they make their money. Apple is a hardware company. That’s where they make their money. Apple pretty much gives away their OS and other software to sell their hardware. Simple isn’t it……duh….

Mkkby
November 1, 2009 at 8:14 am

Bob, what nonsense. Msft doesn’t give a damn about PC sales at other companies. The poor logic of their pricing is simply arrogance and incompetence. Does anything else about their marketing make sense? Then why would pricing?

J.Goodwin
November 1, 2009 at 11:43 am

He’s at least part right.

Apple has no OEMs, so there’s no OEM pricing. Microsoft has OEMs, and the OEM price has to (logically) be lower than the price that they sell for at retail. Therefore the retail price is higher than the desired OEM price by some calculated amount.

Windows XP shipped in Fall 2001. Since then they’ve shipped Vista and 7. Other releases have not been to retail, except as patched-up interim releases that no one is expected to buy because you can get the service packs by downloading them or ordering CDs for the price of shipping.

In Fall 2001, Apple shipped systems with OSX 10.1, which was a service pack (in the Microsoft sense, no fee). Since then, they’ve released five more versions at retail, charging some amount every trip through the turnstile, and marking up their systems by 50%+ for the proprietary boot block all the while.

I don’t know which approach is better, but I do know which one seems to leave happier mocha-sipping fat pigeons in black turtlenecks. I suspect that some things, it doesn’t matter what you charge for them.

sm
November 1, 2009 at 8:23 pm

I love a good market showdown.

Apple took the hardware path, Microsoft the Software/OS path and Microsoft won BIG. Bill Gates became the richest man in the world for a time. He’s still doing pretty good.

Apple then resurrected themselves with colorful, marketable, classy HW and then OSX. Then Apple pulled off the iPod, iPhone, coup that makes the Microsoft execs sooooo pissed.

Still, in the PC market, Apple is gaining market share (thanks in large part to Vista) but Windows 7 looks good. I’ve run it and my recommendation is to stick with XP if you have it, go ahead with W7 if you buy a new machine. Upgrading is pointless for the average business user. Corporate IT staffs need to review whether or not W7 will run their current business apps, but a change from hundreds of XP PCs to Apple is massively more complicated than easing in W7 with new purchases.

I have customers who use PowerBooks and L-O-V-E them. When they need to run a corporate app, they fire up a Fusion machine and run XP. Some of these people have iMacs at home with those gorgeous 20+ inch dispays and they L-O-V-E them. They almost never get infections of any kind, I believe because the bad guys see Windows huge market share and figure the ROI is much higher targeting billion plus Windows machines in the world.

I have customers with XP that have been using the same machine for 4 or 5 years and don’t complain – the machines just work. I teach them certain behavioral techniques and they almost never get virus/adware/malware/spyware infections. The ones that do, I have them run one or two *free* programs and it cleans them up.

The thing to watch is what shift takes place in the market-share war for OSs. If Windows 7 causes the recent gains by Mac OS X to abate, the Microsoft has a winner. If Apple continues to gain market share, then sell your MS stock and buy Apple. Buy Apple anyway, the iPhone/iPod (and soon the Apple NetBook/Reader/whatever it will be) will be winners for a long time to come.

PS – if Apple were not selling OS X for what they are selling it for, does anybody really think that you could buy a new copy of Windows 7 OEM for anything less than $200, or $300? Thank God for free markets and competition.

Stefaan
November 11, 2009 at 4:15 am

There we go again:

Quote:
[Windows] almost never get infections of any kind, I believe because the bad guys see Windows huge market share and figure the ROI is much higher targeting billion plus Windows machines in the world.

Burglars are lazy by definition. They break into the houses that are easiest to break in – first. Then they go after the hard ones. It is the ease that is the main factor, not the quantity…

[…] I, Cringely: “Setting the price at $119.95 is a brilliant move on Microsoft’s part. The company doesn’t want users to upgrade so by setting the price high Microsoft is essentially imposing a Windows 7 upgrade tax on users. Buy a new Windows 7 PC from Staples and the software price drops to $49.95, the same as Snow Leopard. …Microsoft likes to make money, hence the Windows 7 tax, but their main reason for setting the price so high is to get us all to buy new computers. That brings Microsoft less revenue per unit but more revenue overall as businesses, for example, decide to upgrade a whole office with new PC’s rather than pay $119.95 per desk just for new software. New PCs come with dramatically lower support costs for Microsoft than do retail upgrades. The pricing ploy makes Microsoft very popular, too with its Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) like HP, Dell, and hundreds of others.” […]

Derek
November 2, 2009 at 1:53 pm

the best way to upgrade is to install fresh.

1. backup your data (you already do this, yes? )
2. format the drive.
3. install from the upgrade disk, it will ask to “see” the older install disk to prove you are doing an upgrade. the install should take about 15-20 minutes.
4. restore your data from backup.

all up this can be done in about 2 hours.

installing over the top is always a bad idea, you have crud left behind.
a fresh install once a year is a good thing, keeps you system runnning at its best.

Ezra
November 15, 2009 at 11:15 am

This doesn’t work with Vista or 7. To upgrade, the installer must be run from a qualifying version of Windows. My favorite way to do this is install it without a license key (trial mode) and once it boots, before loading drivers or anything, run the setup and input your key this time. That being said, I have had excellent luck getting 7 to upgrade Vista installations in place. It’s generally worth a shot.

Jack North
November 2, 2009 at 2:58 pm

the fanbois are out in force on this one.

I think it is by design. It seems that a certain company has a knack for timing the popular phase of new media streams. Their boyz think it is elite, but that has already passed.

newflash, os/hardware architectures are specialized nowadays.

Tristan
November 3, 2009 at 6:23 am

@Derek: You are wrong. Windows hasn’t asked for a previous disk since XP.

There is a technical workaround to make the install you are suggesting work, however MSFT calls it a hack.

You should do a custom install. It will move all of your old data/programs to windows.old which can safely be deleted or merged back into your new version if you want.

@Bob: how many Gb of pictures, game data, documents and iTunes settings did you have in win3.11? That’s why it doesn’t take long.

Scott
November 3, 2009 at 7:13 am

@Bob

There are so many facts wrong here.

Firstly, you commented on upgrading a 486 – 66mhz machine from 3.1 to windows 95. This mostly takes its toll on the HDD. HDD’s have not changed hugely in speed since, though they have gotten bigger. With more data things take longer.

Secondly, you say that OSX is much cheaper to upgrade. I view this in a different light. Windows upgrades are generally bigger and more feature packed than OSX. Also with windows your not paying for specific hardware. As some one said above, you really pay for the hardware more than the software with apple.

All and all, i think your comments were a bit uninformed and short sighted.

Uenuku
November 9, 2009 at 8:14 am

Actually, HDDs HAVE changed a lot in the last couple years. On 486 computers the typical disk-to-buffer transfer rate was around 70 mb per second. Now SATA HDDs can achieve up to 300mb per second. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive
I agree that Windows installations are bigger, but your assertion that they are more “feature packed” is strictly perception. Many of the packed in features will never be used by a standard user anyway.
Although I don’t necessarily agree with the logic behind this article, I do agree that the upgrade price is too high in the US during a deep recession. It will deter people from buying it, and many of us are tired of subsidizing the lower prices offered throughout the world. Because Microsoft has held an overwhelming monopoly on the operating system market for decades, they will charge higher prices because they belive that their option is the only option available to the customer’s who are currently using a Windows system. Now we are seeing linux finally reach a level of maturity where companies and individuals consider it a viable alternative and Apple is no longer a niche for the elite. This is a perfect storm to start chipping away at the market share leader, Microsoft. Let’s face it, the ipod and iphone have changed the way people look at Aplle, and that is not going to change. A better interface has changed the the fear of changing over to a Linux based system into a curiosity. If the upgrade process is painful or expensive, these other options become even more viable.
I have always held to the opinion that overly high prices for software and digital media of various types is the main force driving piracy. If you offer a good product at an affordable price, people will buy it. Otherwise, someone will offer a way to provide the software to the public in an illegal way.

I think it is true, I know many people who never buy a new OS because they think it is too expensive, rather they put off a hardware upgrade in wait of a new OS bundle, I myself did the same sort of thing in between computers thinking wether I should go with Vista (which I didn’t) or stay with Mac.

Mark Brackett
November 15, 2009 at 1:57 pm

You’re ignoring “volume” license discounts – which pretty much every company would get (I put “volume” in quotes, because you onlyneed 5 licenses of any MS product to qualify).

Based on previous releases, I’d expect anywhere from 10 to 50%+ off retail, depending on volume. Further discounts for non-profits, educational, government, etc.

There’s the $29.99 Win7 for students deal, free copies at Launch Events, free copies to beta testers, and free copies to OEM purchasers of Vista since June. These will all be used in “upgrade” scenarios (if not strict upgrades).

The reason new PCs have lower support costs is mainly because OEMs are required to support OEM copies – not MS. This has been the policy since at least Win98.

So, no, I don’t think MS is punishing upgraders – $120 is probably a fair deal to home users. Apple just charges for each incremental upgrade, which means it’s $40 * 4 instead.

Well, yes. First upgrade: The key was that, as an upgrade from WinXP to Win7, it was not an “in place upgrade’ but a “fresh install upgrade”. Fresh installs are preferable for a lot of reasons, IMO, but the speed of upgrade was key. Oh, I guess if I counted the time it took to run Windows Easy Transfer and save all the computer’s data and settings to an external drive, it would run the time up, but WET just trundled along while I was away doing other things the day before I performed the “upgrade”, so I really didn’t even time that portion of the upgrade process.

The upgrade _counting_ the restoration of data and settings and reinstallation of software took about two hours, with reinstalling the software taking up the majority of that time.

Big deal.

Folks who do an in place upgrade (inheriting all the problems and glurge of the previous installation) get what they deserve, IMO. A fresh installation with data migration is elegant, clean, and in the first case I attempted it with Win7, completely trouble free. Which is why I have continued to use that process on later computers.

Windows Easy Transfer has finally set to rest the bad old days of files and settings transfer from one computer to another or for a fresh install “upgrade” IMO. Of course, the fresh (called “Custom” by the Win7 installer) install _also_ creates a win.old folder with the entirety of the old installation backed up, but it is (has been so far) unnecessary and easily nuked when nothing critical emerges after a couple of weeks.

Fresh install “upgrades”: recommended.

Phil
November 24, 2009 at 5:43 pm

Isn’t it about time for a new nerds style, or is there, from where the last one left off.

Fred
December 3, 2009 at 6:44 am

I hate that restore partition bs. A genuine copy of the OS is much preferred for fixing and reinstalling like YOU want. Maybe that’s why i use Linux.

I’m running a 90 day trial of Win 7 Enterprise Edition. Too bad they don’t sell this version retail as it is very stable and much smoother than XP. I know the Ultimate is similar in features, but it’s unaffordable. I’ll stick with XP and/or Super OS Linux. I’d pay for Enterprise if it were $49. My laptop came with Vista, which would not run given it only came with one gig of ram. Windows 7 runs as fast as XP. Too bad I can’t trade my VISTA license for Win7, as I only used VISTA for two weeks before switching to XP Pro. VISTA was a big ripoff.

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I agree completely that the software is much too expensive. I just wanted to note a significant inaccuracy. I have performed numerous installations of Windows 7 , specifically 64 Bit Professional and 32 Bit Home Premium, and none have taken over thirty minutes. In fact I have had it go by as quickly as fifteen minutes.

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